Japan marks two years since devastating tsunami

March 11, 2013

Nearly 19,000 perished in the 2011 natural disaster

Hiro Komae/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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FILE - In this April 15, 2011 file photo, Japanese police officers carry a body during a search and recovery operation for missing victims in the area devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Namie near the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Japanese nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from the plant operator nearly a decade ago. The towering waves unleashed by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake on March 11 destroyed backup generators for several reactors' cooling systems, and the nuclear cores in three reactors melted, sparking the worst atomic crisis the world since Chernobyl. Workers have yet to bring the plant under control more than two months later. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)

Hiro Komae/ASSOCIATED PRESS

12of63

FILE - In this April 15, 2011 file photo, Japanese police officers carry a body during a search and recovery operation for missing victims in the area devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Namie near the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Japanese nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from the plant operator nearly a decade ago. The towering waves unleashed by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake on March 11 destroyed backup generators for several reactors' cooling systems, and the nuclear cores in three reactors melted, sparking the worst atomic crisis the world since Chernobyl. Workers have yet to bring the plant under control more than two months later. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)